The last thing Stultz wanted was to wake him up.

"I tried to keep him asleep because I knew that potentially I was going to have a live wire on my hands."

It was nearly 11 Monday night when the two arrived at the Raleigh Marriott after driving down from Arlington, Va.

Stultz was halfway across the hotel's parking lot when the cold air woke the boy up.

"Where are we?" Luke asked his father. Stultz reminded him that they were on a business trip and they were in Cary.

Stultz, an engineer and manager for SAS, prepared himself for a long night -- getting his son back to sleep and readying himself for back-to-back business meetings the next day at the Cary software company's campus.

At a time of mounting demands on working parents, Stultz and others are squeezing time in with the kids any way they can. For an increasing number, that means business trips with children in tow -- and coping with all the challenges that creates.

According to Travel Industry Association of America, the number of business trips with kids has increased 19 percent over five years to more than 80 million in 2005.

"We are working longer hours, making it more difficult to balance work schedule and family life," said Allen Kay, a spokesman for the TIA. "More people are finding that one way to do it is to combine leisure trips with business trips."

As a result, many hotels, airlines and child-care businesses recognize an opportunity and are expanding services to accommodate them.

Bright Horizons, which has child-care centers in major cities across the country, lets corporate clients drop their kids off on short notice when traveling for work.

The Raleigh Marriott at Crabtree Valley has children's menus in all the food service areas throughout the hotel, said Karris Deis, director of sales and marketing. "If we know they have a baby or a young child, we ask them, 'Do you need a refrigerator in the room, or do you need a crib?' " she said.

And Dies has noticed that more corporate travelers are bringing their families along on business trips.

"There is definitely a difference from 10 years ago," Deis said. "It used to be very unusual to see families during the day. Now we are seeing a lot more strollers during the weekday than we used to."

World toddler

Zoe Hatzidakis has been to Greece, London, Miami, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, New York and San Francisco. She's 2.

She got her passport when she was 14 months old, said her mother, Denise Hatzidakis, an Apex-based chief technology officer of Perficient Inc., a software consulting firm in St. Louis, Mo.

Hatzidakis sometimes takes along a nanny or a relative to help. Even so, she admits it's still a challenge.

"It's not easy, nor is it cheap. But for me, it's the right thing to do," Hatzidakis said.

It's a philosophy some parents might not understand. Previous generations might have seen a business trip as a break from the duties of child-rearing.

Even now, many business travelers know they will rush to meetings and presentations, without much time for bonding with their kids.

But for many parents, taking the kids along also helps relieve stress on the spouse left at home to manage the kids alone -- often while working full time as well.

Hatzidakis' husband spends a lot of time managing the family's restaurant in Apex.

"If I left ... [Zoe] home, she would be with the nanny all day and a sitter at night," she said. "This way she sees one of us."

Spending time with her daughter is why Catherine Truxillo takes her on business trips.

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